Speaking at the Exponential Finance conference this week, Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, said: “Computers will be at human levels, such that you can have an emotional relationship with them, 15 years from now.” Her was a realistic portrayal of how humans and computers might interact in the future, he said.

The comments suggest that Google, working on a natural language search engine that would allow users to type in questions conversationally and get meaningful responses, may be making progress.

“That is the cutting edge of human intelligence,” Dr. Kurzweil said. He was less impressed with claims that a chatbot emulating a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy called Eugene Goostman had passed the Turing test.

Dr. Kurzweil said, “Eugene does not keep track of the conversation, repeats himself word for word, and responds with typical chatbot non sequiturs.” […]